5-20-2013

Yesterday I left off at the point of me being transferred to PHP after inpatient in spring 2011. There was no way anyone could stay with me so I was going to have to be a grown ass woman and survive for 12 hours by myself. All I had to do was drive .25 miles from my mental hospital to the guest house and survive for not even 12 hours and return to the loony bin by 7:30 AM the next morning. To me things already were looking difficult - I had never stayed anywhere by myself (which is unfortunately pathetic given my age at the time). The guest house which was part of the St. Joseph Medical Center was in all reality in walking distance from my asylum and I casually suggested I would walk back from PHP to the house every night. That idea was shot down before I even left the ground. ABSOLUTELY NOOOO EXERCISE!!! So my drained mom drove up our old Honda civic dropped it off for me and drove a rental care home. Mom do I look fat? How much weight do you think I have gained? They are stupid they want me to gain even more weight! Please take me home. “No. No. No”.

PHP was certainly more of a challenge since I was staying by myself, I mean I was technically alone for 12 hours in a slightly unfamiliar city. The phone call I got from the mom just piled up. Call when I get to the room, if I am going to Barnes and Noble call when I get to Barnes and Noble, and then call when I get back to the Hackerman House, and then call one more time before you go to bed! Ahhhhh!!!!! I was so stuck in my dysmorphic universe; it was all I could think of to lose as many calories as I could while I was out of the hospital for those short 12 hours. I will tell you a dirty little secret… Out of sheer boredom and compulsion of my disorder I walked over to the lovely 8-9 story car garage of the St. Joseph Medical Center and just ran up and down the steps until my heart was beating so hard I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I also got paranoid because I knew the Director of the eating disorders program worked at St. Joseph’s as well…so I stopped. It was just the action of doing it and giving into that tickling little voice that says “keep going, a little more, just 5 more pounds”. You know what that voice is also the one that says “5 more pounds…”- and without warning BAM you are dead, a lifeless rotting corpse. Everyone says the perfect anorexic is dead. It may seem that way, but that is sad. In reality the perfect anorexic is the one who has gone to hell and back with the disease, but has conquered it and put the disease in a box underground, not the other way around.

It is just absolutely bone shilling and heart breaking to see how many people with anorexia/bulimia nervosa do not get better. I am not complaining, but I am tired of seeing pictures of the dejected people who live with these eating disorders for so long. Why the human mind can’t just beat this God darned thing! Anorexia is not life of its own although it absolutely feels like it, but why, why do these diseases claim the lives and sanity of so many people? I am also sick and tired of insurance companies not seeing eating disorders for what they are. Under the health care plan I have had since I was born I am allowed 30 inpatient psychiatric days per year. That means 30 days at Sheppard Pratt or any other program that my insurance just so happens to cover. My insurance does not cover residential treatment for people over the age of 18. I have spent so many bloody hours on the phone with my insurance company trying to figure out if I was approved for treatment. This should not be a debate – if someone is in a life threatening physical and mental state they absolutely need to be hospitalized and get psychiatric treatment. I now have Medicaid as well and they cover even less, yet they say they are the number one source for the treatment of mental health care in the United States. Either the treatment of eating disorders is extremely unrecognized by most commercial and government managed health insurance policies, or the American Healthcare System is going to hell. I happen to think it is a combination of the two.

 

What can I do though, I am just a mentally ill, 20 year old with absolutely no money, and the little money I do get I can’t even manage myself. Tada! What a life I have. My point is that any mental illness including eating disorders need to be recognized by the big guys of the federal government in Washington. Writing these few paragraphs about my opinion will most likely have no effect whatsoever, but at least I am getting it out there.

So after a few days of exercising on my own in my little guest house room and taking laxatives (because I was just that revolting), I had dropped a few small pounds. The transition from inpatient to partial hospitalization is a very delicate part in the mind of the psychiatrist. Therefore, my “slip-ups” (more like purposeful bull shit), caused me to land my ass back inpatient. I walked into my psychiatrist’s office and she had the admission papers and simply said “sign”. I said “I am not going to”. If I didn’t voluntarily sign the paper she threatened to involuntarily commit me to another unit somewhere else in the hospital. That was the reassurance I needed that I had no choice (I always needed reassurance). Well I was officially an inpatient again…but there remained one small problem. All of my belongings were across the road at the Hackerman House and I was still a guest at that house. I told this to my psychiatrist and she took a nice deep breath and leaned back in her chair. “30 minutes”, she said. I had 30 minutes to high tail my ass across the street and throw all my stuff into one big heap, check out of the guest house, and drive like the mad woman I am back to the mad house. My psychiatrist said if I wasn’t back in 30 minutes they would send the police after me (I would have been considered a runaway psychiatric patient). Oh shit this is for real!  I ran into the front door of the guest house and politely as possible told the staff I had to check out because I had to “go”. Guests at the house were patients at the St. Joseph Medical Center, Greater Baltimore Medical Center, and of course The Sheppard Pratt Hospital. They knew exactly which hospital I was a patient at, and the smiled and politely tried to check me out, knowing exactly where I was headed. I made it back to Sheppard Pratt just in the 30 minutes. I was being admitted as an inpatient after only a few days of being a partial patient on my own. The extent of how dysfunctional I was - was beginning to set in. All that was in my mind was, crap I am going to gain more weight now that I am back inpatient.

Like I have said to everyone - eating disorders are dirty, painful, obsessive, and they make you do some crazy shit sometimes. Do not choose it. Keep fighting.

 

 “I am beginning to measure myself in strength, not pounds. Sometimes in smiles.”

 ― Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls